Engaging pension comms are YOUR responsibility – don’t fail your employees

The blame game

It’s easy to blame the individual here, but what does this say about the employer? What’s the point of offering a hugely valuable benefit if your people don’t get anything from it? And if the business isn’t doing anything to promote financial resilience, what does that say about their overall organisational wellbeing?

Done right, communicating retirement saving has the power to improve recruitment, retention, and productivity. So why do so many organisations fail to understand the importance of promoting financial education?

It’s a given that, through maturity, we become focused on our long-term future. At the same time, you don’t need to be a pensions expert to understand that trying to engage anyone under the age of 35 in putting money aside for their retirement is like trying to convince children to eat their vegetables.

The great unknown

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to saving for retirement lies in the difficulty of knowing how much you’re actually going to need.

Let’s compare this with other typical big spends in life – a new kitchen, for example. You have an idea what you want it to look like, you get a quote based on that idea, then you save until you have enough to help you realise your goal.

And there’s the key word – ‘goal’.

Goal setting is all about achieving what we want, as opposed to what we’re able to get. And when it comes to talking about the financial future of their people, employers have an important role to play in communicating the (let’s face it, less than thrilling) ins and outs of the company pension scheme.

The way forward

Let’s deal with the elephant in the room, pensions can be boring. However, it’s also something that needs to be tackled head-on if we want employees to engage with saving for their retirement. So how do employers do this? The answer lies in making sure the information employees need is accessible, easy to understand, and engaging – and those in the know have quite a few tricks up their sleeves.

Modellers

When it comes to helping people make informed decisions about money, interactive modelling tools and calculators that allow people to see the impact of the choices they make are a great way of increasing those engagement levels. Whether you want to help employees build a picture of their desired retirement lifestyle or hit home the impact that delaying saving into a pensions scheme can have, there’s a tool for the job.

Gamification

The basic cognitive principles of gaming motivate users through recognition, challenge, and education. Gaming is interactive and, when used effectively, it can encourage employees to take action. Repeated use of simulation games has been shown to lead to behavioural change and a deeper level of engagement with subject matter – making this approach perfect when it comes to navigating the pensions technical minefield.

Personalisation

Engaging employees with their retirement plan is challenging, no doubt about it; and finding a solution that wows is the key to getting this right. Targeted and personalised communications are a hugely effective way of attracting the attention of even the most disengaged employee – and seeing the specific benefits of your plan summarised in an innovative way that speaks directly to you is the way forward here.

Take it online

Blog-style news feeds are a great way of bringing that often-unopened annual pension scheme newsletter up to date. Think mobile first here; publishing legislative pension information in the same space as engaging lifestyle content, videos, interactive learning modules, gifs, and Tweets - then placing it in the palm of your employees’ hands - is a game changer. And make it fun – after all, you want people to engage.